A social entrepreneur is somebody who comes up with clever solutions for social dilemmas, such as poor educational outcomes and perpetual poverty. You can always work on social problems like these using the free market as your guide, so why do I bring it up now? Because right now the government is offering lots of money to social entrepreneurs who are working on social problems the government wants you to work on. Obama’s Social Innovation Fund (SIF) recently named its first 11 investments that are giving out $50 million over the next few years.
Where are the investments going?
The largest chunk, $7.7 million, is going to Jobs for the Future, which will train 23,000 workers and 1,000 employers; $4 million to teach broke families how to make better financial decisions; $2 million to “tackle” smoking and obesity in Missouri; $5 million to New Profit, which helps high school students make the transition to college.
The government is spending this money on social problems; why not collect that money yourself by coming up with clever solutions yourself? And you can call yourself a social entrepreneur, too.
Pringles Potato Chips are based on the observation of wet leaves, which can stack up in piles without tearing themselves to bits. They survive by stacking compactly together. Enter the immortal Pringles Potato Chip.
It’s not that the honey bee population has declined in absolute terms. But in relative economic terms, the global market is more hungry than ever for honey and pollination. The major staple crops that are needed to feed the world– corn, wheat, potatoes– do not need bee pollination. The global population has doubled in the last 50 years, and production of staple crops has kept up with population. However, the world has developed a sweet tooth. And the production of pollinator-dependent crops has quadrupled, crops like watermellon, cashew, and cardamom.